On 01/21/2013 03:58 PM, Bill Silverstein wrote:
In the USA, and many other places, if one creates a corporation, registers a fictitious business name, or buys property, they are required to make the information regarding the people behind it public. That is currently required for a domain name.
What you say is not strictly correct. The rules vary from state to state. Indeed many states encourage corporate registrations by making it hard to penetrate any deeper than the name of someone to receive legal process, and that very often is a law firm or a specialized corporation that is not going to divulge the actual ownership information.
A domain name is not a requirement to speak anonymously on the internet.
We are not talking about anonymity, but rather about privacy. One may happily be willing to give a name but not an address or phone number or affiliation.
On the other hand, having the information public would reduce the amount bad actors.
And the cost would be a loss of privacy. Moreover, you are justifying your premise by concluding that anyone who desires privacy must therefore be a "bad actor". Your suspicions, particularly when you are unwilling to identify yourself and make specific allegations backed by concrete evidence, is snooping.
But limiting access to the common people, you limit the ability of law enforcement. Ever hear of neighborhood watch?
As for law enforcement - I have utterly no sympathy for them when they don't have the energy to get a proper warrant or subpoena. When they get those things then they are not restrained by any of the WHOIS rules we are talking about. So let's dispense with the law enforcement red herring. Ever read "The Ox Bow Incident"? Ever heard of "vigilantes"? That seems to be what you are advocating. Neighborhood watch groups are not empowered to penetrate the privacy of people who close their doors and pull their window shades. Virtually every police department tells neighborhood watchers to refrain from action and to call 911 and get the police involved. The anti-spam crusade is nice, but on the other hand a lot of my family were tortured and murdered often because their neighbors violated their privacy. And the act that started these threads - the publication of contact information for those with registered firearms in some New York counties - generated such a reaction that NY state has already modified its laws to give increased privacy to those registrations. --karl--